I. FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to new and useful improvements to deposit and collection receptacles, such as mailboxes, and more specifically to a secure mailbox with a limited access storage compartment for the collection and secure retention of mail and other valuable documents.
II. DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
Receptacles, such as mailboxes and other depositories for various items have been in use for many years with typical use involving the mounting of a mailbox along a roadway or into the wall of a home for delivery and pickup of mail. Typical conventional mailboxes that are readily accessible to delivery persons or pickup persons, are also generally accessible to unauthorized persons. Therefore, such conventional mailboxes leave a person's mail susceptible to theft, vandalism, and lack of privacy.
Also, when someone is away from home for several days or weeks, mail that is continually delivered on a daily basis accumulates in the person's mailbox. The accumulated mail not only jams conventional mailboxes, but also can provide a signal or sign to burglars and vandals that the person is away from home for an extend period, thus marking the person's home an easy target for a burglary or vandalism. While the person can request the Post Office personnel to withhold mail delivery or ask a neighbor to collect his mail during his absence, there are times when these solutions are impractical. For example, the person might leave on short notice or forget to make arrangements with the Post Office or a neighbor until the last minute before leaving when it might be after hours or too late or too inconvenient to make such arrangements. Also, such arrangements themselves can be a means of disseminating the information that the person is planning to be gone and the length of his absence, which information, through careless or unscrupulous postal employees or neighbors, can get to burglars or vandals.
It is often more desirable, therefore, to simply say nothing and allow mail, newspapers, and the like to accumulate during a short absence. In such situations, a mailbox having a locked storage compartment for mail to accumulate would be desirable. It would also be desirable to have the mail accumulate out of sight so that a potential burglar could not see the mail accumulation. Yet, when the person is home, he might prefer a normal mailbox for sending and receiving his mail.
A number of mailboxes have been made to provide security for the deposited items by having the items passed through a trap mechanism into a security area when the door is closed so that the items cannot be returned through the trap mechanism when the door is opened. Such arrangements have excessive mechanical parts that wear and break or are affected by moisture, ice, or snow and have been relatively expensive to manufacture and unreliable in use, thus limiting their successful uses. Similar attempts using trap mechanisms have had to provide methods attached to the flag to deflect the operation of the trap when mail was to be picked up by the postman, resulting in additional manufacturing costs. Many times the postman would first lower the flag and unknowingly deposit the mail to be picked up into the secured compartment. Also, many of the prior attempts only had small storage spaces with no provision for holding accumulated mail in a secured chamber while in the absence of the patron. Also prior attempts made no provisions to allow the use of the device as an ordinary unsecured mailbox with optional alternate use for secured retainment and storage of delivered items.
In summary, while there have been a number of prior attempts to solve the problems of providing a secure storage of mail or other items, there is still a substantial, unfulfilled need for an improved mailbox that is simple to operate, economical to produce, easy to gain access and pick up mail on a stationary shelf, secured to prevent theft, and has a large enough compartment for adequate storage of items accumulated out of sight for at least several days or weeks until they are collected. Yet, the mailbox must be accessible to the mail delivery person without keys or the necessity to open the locked compartment for delivery or pick up and which can be understood and used readily by any delivery person without prior instructions.